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Leslie Barns construction delays hit local businesses hard

Business owners suffer as the huge construction project at Lake Shore Blvd. and Leslie Sts. misses deadline after deadline.

The Burger King that was located on the north east corner of the intersection at Leslie St. and Lake Shore Blvd. has closed amid what some business owners call the "never-ending" disruption of commerce caused by the huge construction project known as the Leslie Barns. (David Cooper / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

The story is familiar by now: when streetcar tracks need to be installed or repaired, the TTC takes longer than promised to tear up a road. Small businesses lose money and rebel. The street names have taken on the mournful timbre of historic battlefields at this point: St. Clair, Bathurst-Dundas, Queens Quay, Roncesvalles.

It’s a unique and perhaps unavoidable Toronto problem — the city is criss-crossed by trams like few others places in North America.

But the construction of the Leslie Barns was supposed to be different. In laying a spur line between Commissioners and Queen Sts. and building a streetcar warehouse at Lake Shore Blvd. and Leslie St., the TTC hoped to avoid the pitfalls of the past.

By some measures, they have succeeded. A local community relations office has earned some good will, and some important deadlines have been met.

But four years since the transit agency broke ground on the project, many local business owners say their bottom line has been hit hard and their patience tried by delays and bad communication. While construction on the Eglinton LRT grabbed headlines and became a debating point in the mayoral election, Leslieville has quietly grown restless as another streetcar project drags on.

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Council approved construction of the Leslie Barns in 2009, as the TTC sought a new facility to store and maintain the sleek Bombardier streetcars currently running on Spadina and set to replace the whole city fleet by 2019. To connect the storehouse and Queen St., the commission also began work on a short stretch of streetcar track along Leslie St. to ferry empty vehicles.

The price of that spur line quickly ballooned from $14 million to $105 million as the TTC discovered water mains beneath Leslie St. needed replacing. Some of the pipes had valves dating from the 1800s, said David Nagler, manager of community relations for the commission.

As construction wore on, the TTC blew through deadline after deadline. In the fall of 2013, the project was supposed to be finished by the fall of 2014. Construction on the Leslie spur and barns is now slated to be finished by the summer of 2015.

“It’s never-ending,” said Julie Vuong, clinic manager at Pain Care, a rehab centre at the corner of Queen and Leslie Sts.

Patients at the pain clinic have been especially put out by the roadwork, Vuong said. Many of them, disabled from car crashes and other accidents, come from the far corners of the GTA on crutches and walkers, making street closures a major impediment to arriving for appointments.

“We noticed patients were coming less because of it,” Vuong said.

Every merchant interviewed by the Star agreed that the six-week closure of the Queen-Leslie intersection from mid-May to late June this summer was the worst stretch for business.

“It was a ghost town,” said Alyssa Powileit, a server at The Friendly Thai, just west of the intersection.

Recognizing that hard times were ahead, right before the closure the city hosted a meeting for local residents and business owners at The Duke, a bar and concert venue on the southwest corner of the Queen-Leslie intersection.

Lynda Paul, owner of Leslieville bakery It’s the Icing on the Cake, came away from the meeting feeling insulted. She says Michael Williams, a senior executive with Toronto Economic Development & Culture, addressed the crowd and said, “Before anybody asks, there will be no financial compensation. I don’t know what to tell you. You’re going to have to work really hard to keep your business going.”

“I was underwhelmed by the comment — his grasp of the situation, his empathy, his understanding of what it might do to people’s businesses,” Paul said. “Even if you don’t care, pretend you care.”

(“I would disagree with that characterization of my comments,” Williams said in an interview. “I think I was straightforward and honest.”)

“I’m down between $500 and $1,000 a month since they started,” Paul added. “And for local business that’s big money.”

A motion by local Councillor Paula Fletcher to reduce property taxes for businesses in the area was deferred indefinitely in late May.

Taking matters into their own hands, Leslieville merchants set up lemonade stands around the neighbourhood as soon as the Queen-Leslie intersection reopened. The largely symbolic gesture was inspired by one business owner’s belief that if the closure had been a lemon, they might as well make lemonade, explained local BIA spokesperson Andrew Sherbin, a financial adviser at Edward Jones.

Still, some businesses in the area have gone under in the last 12 months. A Burger King near Leslie St. and Lakeshore Blvd. permanently shut down on Jan. 1 this year, though the company says traffic woes were not the reason.

The Pentimento Fine Art Gallery, meanwhile, closed its doors in May after nine years in business. The fatal blow came in part because the closure of the Leslie-Queen intersection was delayed by several months, said then owner John Rait in an interview with InsideToronto.com at the time.

For all the bitter sentiment about the Leslie Barns project, there have also been expressions of resigned and cautious optimism.

“You can rail against the machine, but the machine still runs,” said Jane Girroir, who works at the vintage clothing and curiosity shop Gadabout on Queen St. just east of Leslie. “On the glass-is-half-full side, it’ll be lovely when it’s done.”

Indra Tamang, who runs a small gas station just north of Lakeshore Blvd. and west of Leslie St., said he appreciates the TTC’s near-weekly email updates on the project. (The commission also has a Twitter account set up to keep locals informed, along with a bricks-and-mortar information kiosk on Queen St.)

Tamang, whose speech is punctuated by frequent bursts of staccato laughter, takes a civic-minded view of the situation. While a recent closure of Eastern Ave. reduced his business to “zero,” he says — “Nightmare! It was difficult to pay the rent” — he’s glad the TTC is undertaking the project.

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